The title is about May – but let’s start with April, since I didn’t write a dedicated post for it. 

So last month I was reading a comic book –  Asterix & Obelix – in czech, which turned out to be harder than I expected. I originally planned to read two comics, but because of the topic and the time of the story, I was really struggling with my reading and decided to read only one. I have a vocab list from it – but I don’t feel like it is relevant to my everyday life or topics I use (I mean… fortune tellers, magicians? All the gallic stuff? I don’t need that now).

Beside my #TLreadingchallenge read I had my Czech lessons (twice a week) and French lessons (once a week). Unfortunately I did not have time or energy for much German or Romanian, so they fell behind in April.

Language challenge and Czech update

Then May came – and life got back on track again! I have my Czech lessons twice a week, and we finally finished the topic of grammatical cases which gave me a slight feeling of success and I gained some motivation again. 

I also decided to follow Heather’s process and read a children’s book, one of my childhood favourite in Czech (Heather is the voice behind The future is bilingual podcast,  and she is reading a lot of polish books to her kids). So my May TL reading challenge choice is the book Pohádky se zvířátky (animal tales) from Vladimír Sutějev. It was a great choice! I enjoy the stories, because they bring back so many memories and also the language is not that hard, because it is for kids. But do not think that it is too easy now – I learn plenty of new words (mostly animal names and everything connected to movements and colors), so it is still a challenge. One interesting thing I noticed is that in Hungary all the tales are in one book, and here they are published in two parts. So I will need to buy the second book too, but that could be another fun read in the future. 

We are soon at the half of the year and there was only one month when I couldn’t finish my chosen book, so I am really proud of myself that I could keep going. The next month I plan to read something in German again, but we will see how things go.

What about German?

In May I finally started to have more German input. I started to rewatch the Gilmore Girls in German – so far I really enjoy it. The only thing which bothers me is that I turned on the German subtitles beside the dubbing – and they do not match! I thought it would be great to see the text written if I don’t understand some words or just don’t know how to write it. But the text of the subtitles are really different from what the characters say. I feel like the subtitles were translated from the original, very first script and the dubbing was localized and translated from the actual series.

I also started to read some posts and short notes online, to get back on track. For May I don’t plan more for German, I think it is better to get slowly back in the habit of studying than to jump all in and lose my motivation in two weeks.

Other languages and life update

I still have French lessons once a week. I struggle a lot with speaking – I am so afraid to say anything in French, for no reason at all. My lovely friend tries to help me with this, maybe I just need more practice.

With Romanian I randomly do duolingo for now, but my friend will travel soon and he promised to bring me a language textbook, so I will have a bit of a structure from next month.

Poor Spanish is completely left behind…Let’s say it is on pause in the first half of the year. I miss it sometimes but I know I cannot dedicate proper time or energy to it right now, and I do not want to jump on and off of Spanish. I feel like if I would be able to dedicate a couple of intensive months to it, then I would progress quite quickly.

A bit of life update, too. In May I participate in the polyglot gathering online event. I was really excited about it! There are many language exchange/practice rooms on the online platform and also a lot of interesting talks and workshops. I will definitely write a separate post about the event. 

In the meantime I am reading some interesting books, for example “This is how I learn languages (Notes of a sixteen-language interpreter)” by Kató Lomb, who was a Hungarian hyperpolyglot, speaking 16 languages. It is half a biography, half a guidebook, mostly about her story with languages. There is a lot to process in this small book and I am sure it will have an impact on my learning style.

Did you read something interesting lately? Either written in your native or your target language? Please share with me in the comments!

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